Monday, May 23, 2011

You might be familiar with the funny jigsaw puzzles made by Jan van Haasteren (JvH). His drawings are part of our Dutch collective youth memories, and known all over the world. Born in 1936 he is an old man now, but still produces three puzzles a year. To me, he is a hero that has had a big influence, I remember being utterly fascinated by his posters, at the butchers, in the hospital, wherever I saw his posters I would stop and try to find all the hidden jokes he squeezed on the paper.He started out as a comic/animation artist for the famous 'Toonder studios' and worked on the various projects they produced, like Donald Duck magazine, the Smurfs, commercial illustrations, mostly anonymous in others' styles and set formats.He got more and more credit for his work and started creating his own series in which we can see his his style devellop into the one we know.But far more than for his comics, he is famous for his posters and puzzles. With his vast imagination he makes every scene he draws into a hilarious chaos, adding jokes and funny details in every small space available. But he does this with great craftmanship, superb drawing skills in terms of placement and perspective, character design and use of color. It is always a chaos, but never a mess. He has some copycats trying to do what he does, but he is the master, and always recognisable by the shark fin coming through and the hands coming from everywhere since those are registered trademarks!

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Friday, May 13, 2011

As some of us already know, David Lynch has been selling his own brand of coffee for some time now. He's now produced a commercial for his coffee. He's voicing the Barbie head as well as himself. Well, er... enjoy.

Sunday, May 8, 2011

Thursday, May 5, 2011

Mangelos, a great but for some reason not really well-known artist and art historian inspired me a lot when I started turning to a more conceptual direction with my art.His work is both, conceptual and very sensual at the same time playing with material and thoughts (represented by texts in different languages).

Born as Dimitrije Basicevic, 1921 in Sid, Serbia (died in Zagreb, 1987), he made art under the pseudonym Mangelos. The name is taken from a village close to his hometown Sid.He divided his life in different "Mangelos", each Mangelos lasting 7 years (the period for all body cells to reniew). As he predicted, his life took 9 1/2 Mangelos.

His work contains different technics and media, such as drawings, collages, watercolors, paintings, altered books and especially his "globes", ordinary globes that he used for his drawings and collages. They are often inscribed with his manifestos and "no-manifestos" concerning philosophy and art.

A manifesto was for him a kind of a vehicle transporting a thought concept without any metaphorical meaning.The postwar thinking was to him represented by a functional, direct thinking, the manifesto per se.A manifesto to him is this functional thinking, including systems like alphabets, mathematical proofs, scientific theories and perceptual schemas.

He was against all kind of metaphorical thinking and emphasises at the same time the rational side of the art. He tried to bring the information to its most laconic form, to a clear and prezise thought (that he called "Super-Wittgenstein-Thought").

His work can be seen in the context of the absurd feeling in the existentialist Nihilism. It's marked by a freedom of expression and a transzendence of media as found in the fluxus movement, as well.He turned against all what seemed to be exhausted und senile and created in his art his own point of view, called No-Art.

As mentioned before he was also art historien, critic, curator and part of the "Gorgona"-artgroup, organising exhibitions, creating concepts, projects and new forms of artistic communication and publishing the Anti-Magazine "Gogona".

Wednesday, May 4, 2011

British computer game programmer Matthew Smith was 17 years old when he programmed the legendary early platform game Manic Miner, back in 1983. I spent a lot of time playing Manic Miner and its sequel, Jet Set Willy, as a kid way back in the 1980's, and it's been a huge and direct influence on my Odboy & Erordog series.

I just recently found this wonderful fairly recent video interview with the guy, who seems like a fantastically likeable guy with a mildly autistic-seeming manner. It just makes me very happy to watch. :) The interview starts at 3 minutes in.